Machine yearning

Creative agency House of Greenland captured the themes of Yi’s work – the merging of tech and biology – in the groundbreaking installation that finished its run at the London gallery last month. 

Inspired by the industrial history of the Tate’s Turbine Hall, which was used to convert electricity for machines, the artist re-introduced machines to the hall in the form of a group of endearing jellyfish-like ‘biologised’ machines she called aerobes. 

While visitors to the Hall could experience a ‘scent-scape’ that linked them to the floating creatures – which each had different scent molecules – the creative team at House of Greenland, including director and agency co-founder Agathe Cury, had to think of alternative ways of engaging the senses in the campaign, which comprised of one four-minute film and three social media videos. 

They collaborated with award-winning composer Jered Sorkin to create a bespoke soundscape that captures the mystery and ethereal quality of Anicka Yi’s gentle, alien-like creations. 

The team also had the challenge of filming the aerobes’ unpredictable movements, which were controlled via AI and other factors such as temperature, as they reacted to their environment. 

One of the social media videos features an interview with the gallery team about their relationship with their aerobian tenants, saying how it was “really hard not to anthropomorphise them.”

But, with the future of mankind looking to be inextricably linked to bots, maybe anthropomorphising them, even forming closer relationships with them and their funny little bot ways, is no bad thing...